Meanwhile Steam has had this feature for over a decade and has a functional download client, unlike the Windows Store. It doesn't even have a download limiter. Whoever designed it should have their genitals shoved in a blender... not even joking.

I don't give a shit about new maps when the game itself won't even fucking install! If you thought GFWL was bad then that's nothing in comparison to the aborted foetus that is the Windows Store. I spent days trying to get it to install - using WSReset, manually downloading the installer, deleting folders, etc - but with no luck. It's apparently a widespread problem.

Microsoft can fuck right off if it thinks it's going to get people to buy games through that monstrosity. Whoever designed it should have anthrax inserted into their face with a cheese grater.

Peeeling wrote on Oct 23, 2016, 16:34:Actually, it absolutely isn't. Arma (and consequently DayZ) employ a unified system and have done for years. And it's still pretty clunky. Clunkiness is inevitable and ineradicable, because in the end you're shackling the first person experience to predefined animations that other people are watching.

ArmA is horrible to play and one of the reasons I was concerned about unifying animations. However, CIG has already eliminated the clunkiness and has demoed that in the vision stabilisation video and at CitizenCon.

Peeeling wrote on Oct 23, 2016, 16:34:On the whole I think it's a white elephant of a feature. Counterstrike and Overwatch (and Quake before them) are played professionally for very high stakes, and nobody thinks they would be improved by making the FPS experience slower and clunkier for the sake of 'fidelity'.

Unification of animations is important for customisation. In Star Citizen they can implement items of clothing once rather than having to make them for both first and third person view; same with weapons, accessories, etc. It also means the player is completely aware of how visible they are, because their view isn't being rendered in a fake first person view.

Other developers have tried to unify animations before - Crytek attempted it but abandoned the idea - but Star Citizen is the first to get it right and it's only early days still.

Kosumo wrote on Oct 22, 2016, 07:07:Vision stabilization? Like that's ground breaking stuff right there! Why do they need such a thing in a FPS game/engine? Cos Chris Roberts, master game director, wants the first and third person animations to be the exact same ..... it'll will make the game so much better you know!

Actually, it absolutely is groundbreaking. All the animations are unified, meaning that to add a new weapon into the game only requires making it and animating it once. In the long run it will save them time. It means that the player sees whatever others around them see - there's no faking it. The vision stabilisation was the tech required to make it feel like a conventional first person shooter, as currently the movement is very clunky.

CJ_Parker wrote on Oct 22, 2016, 07:14:What? When did that happen? I thought you were enjoying the fuck out of the game and it already had more content than many other AAA games at release?

I enjoy it and play it regularly - I played for a few hours earlier with one of the friends I made at CitizenCon last year. The gameplay is fun, despite how basic it is. However, when you can only get 12-24fps that will obviously impact your enjoyment of the PU (which is only one element of the current release). And I never said it already has more content than many other AAA games - I said it would eventually.

Joss wrote on Oct 22, 2016, 11:05:Yep, waiting until 3.0, then clearing off GTA V from my SSD.

If you are interested in the game then I would honestly advise holding off on the Free Fly events until 2.6 or 3.0 is released, as right now the 2.5 release is pretty shoddy. You can see the potential but playing on the PU will get you 12-24fps because of a server side bottleneck - that's the framerate I get with an overclocked GTX 1080. You can play Arena Commander at 60fps, so if you're going to try it then I suggest starting there.

With 2.6 we should get vision stabilisation, a new menu system, Star Marine, rebalanced flight mechanics and a new flyable ship. With 3.0 comes the updated netcode, which should significantly improve performance - along with a huge amount of new gameplay content.

But no-one can fault CIG for smoke and mirrors when they are allowing anyone to try the game for free and see for themselves.

RedEye9 wrote on Oct 16, 2016, 10:15:Don't let KX fool you, he dropped a grand on the game and when he got cold feet he got the money back with such fanfare you would have thought he discovered the cure for cancer.His mo is set in stone and this won't be the last time he pre-buys a game or kickstarter and is disappointed, just read a NMSky thread. ;)

His vendetta against the game has been quite entertaining. Which is bizarre, as he invested a huge amount of money, didn't like the direction of the game and they refunded him. Can you imagine EA or Ubisoft doing the same?

NasWulf wrote on Oct 16, 2016, 10:29: so far I think this sums it up for the fans (time stamp 15:52) and how most fans feel about the game ... NMS had the same passion from fan but on a unseen level, fans were threatening death to people who spoke ill about the game they only seen snippits of. At least in SCs case you (as a fan) get to watch and be apart of that development.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRsF6_lwLas

I think that video highlights the openness of the development process. The aimed high and couldn't deliver on time, with fans expressing their disappointment. The community is generally very reasonable - people have a lot of passion for the game but if CIG messes up they're the first to point that out.

For me CitizenCon was a disappointment, as impressive as the Homestead demo was. We were expecting footage from S42 and that's an aspect of the game that has been kept under close wraps to prevent spoilers. If we see the demo this year then I'll be happy - if we don't then that concerns me, especially if they were supposedly close to having it ready.

Rigs wrote on Oct 15, 2016, 23:53:Your reply comes off as extremely childish and honestly I debated whether to even waste the time. Your mind is set, nothing, not Murray apologizing, not Sony refunding money, not the fucking Second Coming of Christ will change it. If refunds and apologies were made, you'd say they weren't enough or that it was too late or that they should have known. So whatever.

No apology can make up for a bait-and-switch, where gamers were misled into buying a product with a fraction of the gameplay promised. Sean Murray went around telling blatant lies, confirming features that were never going to be in the game - the game's reputation is beyond repair.

Refunds, apologies and patches don't make up for the deceit. They might be able to patch in some of the features promised but that doesn't undo what was done. Imagine being sold a new house only to find out the roof that was promised isn't there - an apology doesn't help, neither does them building half a roof or offering a refund. People want the game they paid for.

This isn't about 'hate' or people 'itching for a fight'. This is about consumers calling out companies and individuals who deliberately mislead people for their own financial gain.

jdreyer wrote on Oct 15, 2016, 17:00:What's your take on why people give hundreds or thousands of dollars to this project years after it was announced?

When I backed the Kickstarter I put in $45. I was extremely interested in the game but couldn't justify more than that. It wasn't until the release of Arena Commander that I increased my pledge, as I really liked the direction of the game and wanted to support it. Over time I've spent small amounts upgrading to various different ships, buying merchandise, etc. I also gifted some copies of the game to friends and family when there were some offers. My total spend is now $620 - that includes several T-shirts, a CitizenCon ticket, four game packages (two for friends; two for me, including the limited edition AMD package) and an additional ship. In total that works out to about $12 a month.

For that money I've got to enjoy the game as it progress, watch all the community content (hours of videos a week), meet backers and developers at CitizenCon (I got to talk to Chris Roberts, Erin Roberts, Sandi Gardiner and Dave Haddock), go on Concorde, shape the development of the game and make many friends. For me that's incredible value for money.

jdreyer wrote on Oct 15, 2016, 04:48:Fine, but you see my point? WoW was designed to appeal to both the LCD and hardcore. Star Citizen is only the latter. While I personally am glad for that, it limits the ability appeal to the masses, limiting players.

There's nothing inherently 'hardcore' about the game. In fact it's being built in a way that it appeals to everyone - people can focus on FPS combat, cargo running, racing, space combat, socialising, piracy, etc. That's what will give it mainstream appeal.

Kosumo wrote on Oct 15, 2016, 05:39:As of now, whatever is abled to be played by backers in 2.4, could you explain to me what is multi-crew gameplay?

As of now ships are able to be used to transport other players and to man turrets. I often play with friends where one of us will pilot and the other will man the turrets, then get off at satellites to bring them back on line whilst the pilot patrols. On larger ships, like the Starfarer, you can even have large firefights involving a dozen players. As with most of the game it's rather basic at the moment but is expanding with each release.

Peeeling wrote on Oct 15, 2016, 09:22:Elite is not a finished game. It's every bit as much a work in progress as SC. The difference is that it's been developed in a sensible manner, so what you get right now is a solid, joined-up experience that could pass for a complete, albeit rather insubstantial game. To say that SC is being developed in a better way because you prefer their specific flight/combat system is silly. I'm not claiming the Elite devs are making better design decisions. I'm saying they're making infinitely better development and scheduling decisions.

That's your opinion. I disagree.

Peeeling wrote on Oct 15, 2016, 09:22:Again, double standards. You're comparing Elite in its current work-in-progress form with a product you're imagining playing in X years time.

Elite: Dangerous has been released. Star Citizen is in alpha. Elite is being expanded upon but you can't pretend it hasn't been released - it was released two years ago. I own both games, so don't pretend I'm not familiar with them.

jdreyer wrote on Oct 15, 2016, 16:57:A year ago I would have agreed with you. There's an old adage in the charity industry, "You have to spend money to make money. " They have spent a couple mil on all of the vids, contests, website, Citcon, and all the other community outreach they've done. They've pulled in $30M. So you could say it was not inefficiently spent at all. Without that expenditure they don't bring in 10% of that.

The videos they put out are funded by subscribers, which is a separate budget. The community team, including people like Sandi Gardiner, are paid directly out of subscriber funds rather than out of the crowdfunding total. The subscriptions run up to $264, meaning that if just 1.5% of subscribers were backers you're talking about an additional $6m a year. That money goes to promoting the game and keeping the community informed of the development, without taking away from the development budget.

CJ_Parker wrote on Oct 14, 2016, 15:44:By the way, the reaction on the cultist forums to the editor segment was hilarious. People were celebrating this as if CR just shit out a massive golden egg with ivory coating when in reality what you got to see was a standard development tool that allows level designers to place and align shit in the world. Whoopdeedoo... big deal? It looked exactly like any old editor or mod tool has looked for the last couple of decades.But such is the way of the cultist... they are easily impressed by... everything.

There was no such response. People were impressed overall at what was shown but the community was disappointed by the lack of Squadron 42 content and the Star Marine no show. You can't accuse the community of being 'cultists' when they are highly critical of the project when warranted.

CJ_Parker wrote on Oct 14, 2016, 15:44:Yep. And it was missing at least 99.9% of all promised gameplay systems, zero AI (those Tusken raiders were dumb as a brick) and it was also missing 99.6% of the promised graphical fidelity. There was also obviously no multiplayer whatsoever, let alone anything resembling a PU or MMO environment with potentially dozens of other players or ships in the vicinity. It is quite worrying that this barebone, stripped down to full nekkidness version dipped into the 40s fps-wise on a high end rig like that. This means that the full version with all systems in place will in fact require a "supercomputer" or massive scaling down but let's worry about that when we get closer to release in 2025...

They haven't implemented DX12 yet and they stated that they're working on CPU and GPU optimisations. In other words you're criticising a pre-release alpha game for not having the same performance as a AAA released game with optimised drivers. Also, while there were drops the bulk of the presentation was running at 70-100fps. With optimisation it will easily run fine.

CJ_Parker wrote on Oct 14, 2016, 16:57:The original prerecording session was real, of course. Someone must have partially played, partially scripted (camera cuts, guy on the mountain top etc.) and then (pre-)recorded this at their office in Santa Monica before they went to CitCon to show it off there. It doesn't surprise me that it did not run with SLI because SLI has been broken as fuck since day 1 of the very first hangar release in 2013. It causes more issues than it gives a performance benefit.

SLI was fixed over a year ago, which shows how much you follow the project. The only bug recently was a flickering that occurred for a few seconds when first spawning. The issue is that the game is bottlenecked by the netcode at the moment, meaning that everybody is limited whether they have SLI or not. And again, are you really expecting SLI to work properly on an alpha test without optimised drivers released for it? Most major games have a special driver release.

All your criticism relates to the fact that the game is in alpha and is still under active development. That's like complaining that a house under construction lets in water when the roof hasn't been built yet - yes it's true but it won't be an issue once the roof is finished.

Peeeling wrote on Oct 14, 2016, 08:06:You can play E:D, but you find it boring because there isn't enough to do yet. In SC you can, as of right now, do even less, but you aren't bored by it because you can't actually play it yet. So you're still free to imagine how exciting it will be to play when that eventually happens.

I don't particularly care for the flight mechanics and combat in Elite: Dangerous. It feels a bit disconnected and slow. The combat and flight mechanics in Star Citizen really appeal to me and I find it already very enjoyable. There's also the multi-crew gameplay, which is a major game changer. The gameplay that's already in Star Citizen is for me significantly more enjoyable than Elite: Dangerous and it's being actively developed - it's nowhere near complete. And it's not because I can't play it yet, as I'm all to aware of the issues - currently the framerate is appalling, which means it isn't very enjoyable at the moment.

Star Citizen is the game that I want to play. Elite: Dangerous was just something to play while I was waiting. Even though Star Citizen is only in alpha I've played it substantially more than Elite: Dangerous, which is a completed game.

saluk wrote on Oct 14, 2016, 12:50:They have no financial incentive to finish the game. They will keep delaying until people stop paying.

Nonsense. The incentive is that they can sell people the next chapters and future expansions. Squadron 42 is only the first chapter in a Star Wars like trilogy.

jdreyer wrote on Oct 14, 2016, 15:21:You're usually so logical and stick to the facts, but you've really jumped the shark with this comment. Elite came out 2 years ago. Of course player count is way down. You really think SC will have more than a few thousand 2 years after launch?

Team Fortress 2 has 50,000+ players and it was released nearly ten years ago; Counter-Strike: Global Offensive was released four years ago and has 500,000+ players; World Of Warcraft still have millions of players. The age of the game isn't the issue. Elite: Dangerous just doesn't have the replayability that Star Citizen is being designed with.

jdreyer wrote on Oct 14, 2016, 15:21:Comparing SC to CSGO is just ridiculous. CSGO is popular due to its hypercompetitive replayability and gambling. SC aims to be an open world sandbox. WoW is a better comparison to the PU, but whereas Blizzard opted for streamlining, RSI is taking the opposite tack. They're trying to model everything in simlike detail in a direct appeal to the hardcore. This will quickly drive away all but the most hardcore.

Star Citizen is looking to be the World Of Warcraft of its genre. It's being built to last a decade, not disappear in a couple of years like Elite: Dangerous or a couple of months like No Man's Sky. Whether it will achieve that is another matter but that's what it's aiming for.

Peeeling wrote on Oct 14, 2016, 07:09:Just to clarify: it's not my contention that SC (by which I mean the vision of SC they've allowed fans to conjure in their heads over the years) would be done by now if it had been done properly.

What I'm saying is that if it had been done properly, everyone (including me) would, right now, be happily flying our ships around a huge multiplayer persistent universe, getting out and walking around space stations, driving around planets, trading, doing missions, upgrading our ships - and I can say that with confidence because Elite has already done most of that on a tiny fraction of the budget.

I own Elite: Dangerous and they're not even in the same league. Same with No Man's Sky - it may have a huge universe but if there is so little to do there then it doesn't have any staying power. CIG is developing the game with the big picture in mind, basing it around an expansive lore and extremely involved gameplay mechanics. However, that doesn't come overnight. WoW took years after release to become a worthwhile game and even then it relied heavily on rinse and repeat fetch missions.

Owning both Elite: Dangerous and Star Citizen I can say with confidence that I much prefer the route being taken by CIG. It's not about a sprint, it's about a marathon. They're developing a game that will be actively played for a decade, not something that will quickly lose its appeal. According to Steam there are less than 6,000 people playing per day - more people are playing DayZ and Borderlands 2, older games that have replayability and a community. Look at Counter-Strike: Global Offensive - it has over half a million daily players. That's what CIG is looking to achieve with Star Citizen and rushing the game out is a great way to kill off any chance of that happening.

CJ_Parker wrote on Oct 13, 2016, 22:30:It's not coming together at all in 3.0. They have revealed at CitizenCon that travel to multiple star systems, which is the most basic essence and whole point of the game, won't be out before 4.0. And 4.0 won't be here before early 2018 at the very earliest (very optimistic estimate).

Even if they released all 100 systems today it wouldn't make the game enjoyable, as you still need the gameplay there to maintain interest. That's why they're focusing on building out one star system to full fidelity, all the while developing the gameplay mechanics (mining, refuelling, escort, salvage, repair, farming, rescue, etc). CIG has the ability to quickly put out all the systems now using their procedural planets technology - they demoed how quick it is to put together planets and landing zones - but they're looking to iterate and incorporate community feedback.

The release of 3.0 brings with it the first star system, an expansion of the large Crusader sector we already have. It brings subsumption, meaning AI characters that will populate the universe. It brings procedural planets which can be freely explored by players. It brings the first iteration of the cargo mechanic, creating a viable non-combat role. It brings the new netcode and performance optimisations, which are needed due to the serious performance issues affecting the PU currently. The aim is for there to be enough content in a particular system that players won't need to travel to other systems to enjoy the game. As we've seen with NMS and Elite: Dangerous, if there's not enough gameplay there it doesn't matter how many systems you have.

The amount of gameplay that a single planet will produce will be more than most games. However, that doesn't come overnight and each new gameplay mechanic added has to be tested and iterated upon. If you don't see the potential of the game then that's fair enough but millions of people do.

grudgebearer wrote on Oct 13, 2016, 21:05:But none of that is a beta, or even an alpha of Star Citizen or Squadron 42. It's a collection of individual systems, that are not connected in any way to one another. I'm sorry, but even in buggy state of WoW's alpha, it was far more than what CIG has released so far. Given the time that has been spent so far on development, there's no way that they get to any sort of actual alpha of either game that is even close to including all of the features that were promised in either, before 2018.

Squadron 42 is being developed behind closed doors so as not to ruin the impact, so that's separate. As for Star Citizen, you're right that it's not yet in beta - that's why it's called Alpha 3.0. The mechanics are being built up over time but there's been substantial progress and Alpha 3.0 is really where the game starts to come together. CIG has had to build up the studio on the fly and only now is content creation starting to get going.

So yes, the game is going to take a lot longer still. That's not in dispute.

Dacron wrote on Oct 13, 2016, 20:10:Just enjoy their fan boi responses. I remember believing in DNF just as much, and that was by a proven studio. Who had to give away development like Chris Roberts did with his previous games, whilst having less of a name/resources as 3d realms.

Troll. Troll. Troll. Troll. Troll.

DNF was developed behind closed doors, there was no interaction with the community, it went years without any progress updates and you want to pretend that has any relevance to Star Citizen? If that's your benchmark for comparison then why not use Team Fortress 2? There the developers went quiet for years with little interaction but then completely retooled the game and created one of the most popular games ever.

Other games that were delayed: Half-Life, Half-Life 2, Team Fortress 2, Unreal Tournament, Halo, Metro: Last Light, Bioshock Infinite, GTA V, etc. Delays don't make a game bad. You also have to factor in that CIG had five employees when the game was revealed in 2012, then 2013 had 48, 2014 had 161, 2015 had 250 and 2016 has 360. A lot of the development time has been concepting and building the various studios. The expansion has been exponential rather than linear, meaning that a year's worth of progress now is substantially different to the first year of development.

But I know you're not interested in a sincere discussion. So keep on trolling.

grudgebearer wrote on Oct 13, 2016, 18:43:How is anything that has been released by CIG so far, anywhere close to the WoW alpha, much less the beta?

You have a hangar where you can look at the polygons you've spent money on, and a box in space where you can fly a limited number of ships around and shoot things. Other than an exercise in flight mechanics, what has actually been released to the backers that shows the project is actually on track to completing the proposed project plan?

The hangar was the initial module, followed by Arena Commander (which introduced flight, combat and racing), the Social Module (introducing the first planetside location and social hub) and the Persistent Universe (which introduced multi-crew ships, local physics grids, 64-bit precision, missions, repair, FPS combat, currency, shopping and refuelling mechanics, etc). Star Marine is due out imminently, which will hone the FPS mechanics. Alpha 3.0 is due out later this year / early next year, which will introduce procedural planets, cargo mechanics, trading, etc.

Last year at CitizenCon in October they showed off Alpha 2.0 and it was released in December of that year. The time from being revealed to being playable was relatively short. In other words we'll soon have what was showed off here. From there each patch will be more substantial and take the game that much closer to where it needs to go.

jdreyer wrote on Oct 13, 2016, 17:42:The tech is coming along nicely, sure. So was No Man's Sky's tech.

With NMS the developers deliberately concealed the gameplay mechanics and misrepresented what the game was. With SC the developers have been very openly and working with the community to develop features. They couldn't be further apart.

jdreyer wrote on Oct 13, 2016, 17:42:The question is, will they have enough funds to finish it? I've been amazed at their ability to pull in cash, but their progress has been slowww, and that money is going to dry up at some point. They've got at least another year of work on the engine, and years of work for the content. Do they have years of funding? Will they continue to get "donations" to the tune of $30M a year? It's got to start to decline at some point.

The game is consistently pulling in $30m each year, which is easily enough to sustain development and more. As the game gets closer to release it will attract more people who were unwilling to make a speculative purchase like the early backers. Certainly it's reasonable to question the sustainability of the funding but momentum has only been building and we still haven't had the Squadron 42 reveal. For now it's simply not a concern.

Dacron wrote on Oct 13, 2016, 11:14:Wow, reading Naswulf losing his shit like a petulant child post after post was a great read this morning.

You must be reading different posts because the ones I've read have been perfectly reasonable. The critics here are just trying to get a rise out of people, accusing anyone who has the audacity to like the game of being delusional zealots.

Based on everything I've seen so far I have confidence that the game will end up being excellent; I also have confidence that there will be numerous more delays.

theyarecomingforyou wrote on Oct 12, 2016, 18:30:As much as it may seem like a lost cause I think it's worth putting in the effort. There's only so long the critics of the game can bash the game before it proves them wrong, as it has done many times already.

Haha another ridiculous claim.

While it is true that the extreme doomsayers (of which I have never been a part FWIW) who predicted CIG would fold any minute now were proven wrong, everyone else (the regular skeptics) has not just been proven right but no one ever expected in their worst nightmares that CIG would suck as hard as they do.

Proven right? The game has been delayed. We get that. But the development is progressing well and what's been demonstrated to date has exceeded what was originally promised by a significant margin. I don't mind delays if the end result is an excellent game and everything so far suggests that to be the case.

Criticising a pre-alpha game for not matching up to a AAA release is pointless. Compare it to building a house - of course a house under construction is going to let in water if it doesn't have a roof; however, if the rest of the construction is of a high quality then when you put on the roof you'll have a high quality house.

If you want to bash a game under development for being delayed go ahead. All I care about is the final product and the work that CIG has done so far is exceptional. If the final product isn't any good then that will be a separate discussion.

Peeeling wrote on Oct 12, 2016, 07:19:Actually, yes it is. If expanding the scope of the project means having to throw out hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of work, then you have done something wrong in the planning and/or execution. You aren't 'expanding' anything. It's the difference between building a house and then building an extension, and building a house, bulldozing it flat and then building a bigger one.

Nonsense. Valve basically went back to the drawing board with the original Half-Life and that went onto be one of the definitive video games of all time; Team Fortress 2 was originally completely unrecognisable from the game it became; Valve also had major issues with Half-Life 2, resulting in significant delays but people now remember it as an all time classic game. What matters is the end result - iteration is an important aspect of video game development.

NasWulf wrote on Oct 12, 2016, 08:05:Honestly I don't know why you keep coming here (or myself for that matter) and trying to show most these morons how things are coming along and how their "facts" are non-facts. The Tech that RSI and the other teams have produced for SC and SQ42 is just jaw dropping and no one around here could do the same or wish they could do the same.

...

I like your determination and your passion to show these clowns what SC is going to be but like or the DEV road map but when they or something they state as truth is proven wrong, they move on to another complaint or another falsehood. And I doubt you'll ever change most of their minds. Oh and like I said before, you know almost if not all have or will get SC when its released so I think its funny in that way ...

As much as it may seem like a lost cause I think it's worth putting in the effort. There's only so long the critics of the game can bash the game before it proves them wrong, as it has done many times already. It's a major technological challenge and CIG has been doing an astonishing job. I have my issues with the game's development but overall it's moving very much in the right direction.